Solid Oak Software CyberSitter 2003
The subject of access to master lists is a touchy one for filtering companies, who see it as their primary R&D cost; as such they'd rather not have them visible to the public. CyberSitter perhaps takes this to an extreme; it's the only software package we've ever seen to have this rather restrictive clause in the End User Licence Agreement:
"Unauthorized reverse engineering of the Software, whether for educational, fair use, or other reason is expressly forbidden."
It's only available as a downloadable file, and has one notable quirk that no other package contained; it won't install without first being given the primary email address of the main system administrator. We're not sure why CyberSitter wants this information, but in an age where Spam is endemic, we suggest it's a factor that may turn many users away from the product.
When CyberSitter 2003 is first launched, it gives the option to scan the hard drive for what it calls "objectionable material". It calls itself the CyberSitter System Snooper, which we'd challenge anyone to say three times fast. Its interface is easy enough to follow, but visually quite basic.
CyberSitter works via a mixture of word filtering and category lists, and it's the broadest of any package we've examined. By default, it will filter for material under the following categories: Adult/Sexually Oriented, Illegal Activities/Drugs, Hate/Intolerance, Illegal Guns/Violence.
Optionally, users can add the following: Gay/Lesbian Topics, Cults/Occult, Violent Games, P2P File Share, Tobacco/Alcohol, Gambling Sites, Banner Ads, Legal Guns/Weapons, Personal Ads, Tattoo/Piercing, Warez/Hacker Sites, On-Line Chat, Shareware Sites, Financial Sites, Illegal MP3 Files, Popup Ad Windows, Sports, Game Sites, On-Line Auctions, TV/Entertainment, Movie Sites, Wrestling, Job Search, Free E-Mail Sites, Pokemon Sites, Astrology/Fortune Telling, PICS Ratings Adult/Violence.
Cybersitter can also block file sharing, FTP, Newsgroups and Instant Messaging clients. Users can be forced to use Cybersitter's default search engine, although strangely enough not on systems running Windows 2000 or XP.
In addition to the categories list, CyberSitter also offers a word filter and whitelist option. While the word filter initially appears to be blank, it's clearly always in action; Cybersitter's own page notes that "A sophisticated "content recognition" system recognizes and blocks new objectionable web sites even before we know about them", which sounds like a marketer's way to describe a keyword filter if ever we heard one.
Those of an anti-filtering package persuasion could reasonably argue that implementing all of these options could block out the entire Web. In our testing, CyberSitter sat in the upper echelon of packages, but we had strong reservations about its blocking method; rather than show a warning page, it simply loads a blank page, which gives the end user no information at all. As a result, users won't know directly if a page is forbidden, and may try again. On some test pages, it instead defaulted to showing a DNS error, which is even worse, as users will just suspect the page is down. CyberSitter's logs do show information to the administrator as to why pages are blocked, and for the most part these were informative, although we did find some hate sites classified as 'adult' for some reason.
We also hit problems with certain site types, as in our testing it didn't seem to matter whether the filter was on or off. The Gay/Lesbian filter picked up pages -- including one sporting association -- whether it was activated or not, and the gambling filter gleefully let through our selection of sites regardless of it being on or not. It stumbled on our filtering parody page, which set off six different word flags.
CyberSitter 2003
Company: Solid Oak Software
Price: US$39.95 via download
| Introduction | Editor's Choice | How we tested | |
| AllegroSurf | ChildSafe | ChildWebGuardian | ControlKids |
| CyberPatrol | Cybersitter | Net Nanny | WeBlocker |
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